A reminder of what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are really about

LeDaro: Blackwater=Blackoil
Read the post, watch the video.
Excerpt:
When will the World understand that all these so-called wars for freedom
and democracy are for resources and, in the case of the
Iraq/Afghanistan war, for fossil fuel resources? It’s blatantly obvious
for Iraq. For Afghanistan apparently there is going to be a natural
gas pipeline from the former USSR, through Afghanistan, into an Indian
Ocean port.

Perspective on 9/11 and the invasions of Iraq and AfghanistanClick the link

Perspective On 9/11 And The Invasions Of Iraq & Afghanistan
Click the link to see the graphs

Conditions for women in Afghanistan worse now, but media spins the opposite

Dawg's Blawg: "Time" exploits victim to promote Afghan war
Excerpt:

"I heard Aisha's story from her a few weeks before the
image of her face was displayed all over the world", Ann Jones, author
of Kabul in Winter, wrote in the August 12 Nation. "She told me that her
father-in-law caught up with her after she ran away, and took a knife
to her on his own; village elders later approved, but the Taliban didn't
figure at all in this account."

The Time story, however,
attributes Aisha's mutilation to a husband under orders of a Talib
commander, thereby transforming a personal story, similar to those of
countless women in Afghanistan today, into a portent of things to come
for all women if the Taliban return to power ...

Afghan feminist
Malalai Joya : "During the Taliban’s regime such atrocities weren’t as
rife as it is now and the graph is hiking each day."

The article at RAWA cites a March 11, 2010 CIA document on spinning the war, published by WikiLeaks : CIA Red Cell

"Afghan
women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in
combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and
credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations
for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach
initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share
their stories with French, German, and other European women could help
to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward
the ISAF mission.

Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan
women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that
have large and disproportionately female audiences.

US funds to warlords for protection ends up being paid to the Taliban as bribes

Funding the Afghan Taliban - INSIDE STORY - Al Jazeera English
...

In an ironic twist of events, US citizens have discovered that it
is their tax money that indirectly funds Taliban - the very people their
troops are fighting in Afghanistan.
 
A congressional
investigation revealed that millions of dollars spent by the US
military for security puposes has inadvertently gone into the pockets
of the Taliban.

The US pays millions of dollars annually to local warlords across
Afghanistan in exchange for gunmen to protect the supply convoys.
 
Investigations
revealed that these gunmen in turn bribed the Taliban not to attack.
 
When
convoys refused to pay warlords, their trucks were often attacked.
 
The
report concluded that this has undermined US efforts to end corruption
and build an effective Afghan government. On the contrary, it has
unwittingly funded the insurgency.

...

Mineral riches found in Afghanistan

US finds vast Afghan mineral riches - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - Al Jazeera English
Another reason America will continue to wage war in Afghanistan.

...
A report in the New York Times said previously unknown reserves of lithium, iron, gold, niobium, cobalt and other minerals could transform the impoverished country into one of the world's most lucrative mining centres.
"There is stunning potential here," General David Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, told the paper in an article published on Monday.
"There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant."
The New York Times was reporting the final results of a study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and a Pentagon task force, initiated in 2006.
...

Afghanistan war is becoming Obma's Achilles heel

LeDaro: Afghanistan war is becoming Obama’s Achilles heel

US Troops fire on passenger bus outside Kandahar, killing 4 civilians

Anti-American anger grows in Afghanistan - The Globe and Mail
U.S. troops fired on a crowded
passenger bus on the outskirts of Kandahar city, killing four civilians
and injuring 18 others, stoking anti-American protests that promised to
complicate a massive offensive against Taliban insurgents this summer.
...

Do the Harperites think nobody gives a damn when you defecate all over those values

Accidental Deliberations: The reviews are in
Column by Rick Salutin on Harper's prorogation move.

Richard Colvin Part 1 video

Facebook | Videos from Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament: Richard Colvin Part 1 [HQ]

Richard Colvin - Aghanistan Testimony - part 2 of 2 video

YouTube - Richard Colvin - Afghanistan Testimony - PT 2-2

Colvin testimony on torture in Afghanistan and the Canadian Government

Colvin torture testimony – the full transcript : Contrarian

A backgrounder on prorogue this time around.

What’s at stake - Andrew Coyne's Blog - Macleans.ca

... The government’s professed rationale, that this is all about economic planning, is obvious bilge: nothing prevents a government from planning and meeting Parliament at the same time, or certainly shouldn’t. The informal justification its supporters are putting about is scarcely better: it may be inconvenient to the government that its appointees do not yet control all Senate committees, but that is no reason to shutter Parliament. It is a motive, not a defense.

So that leaves the obvious. As KDO has explained, the fact that the government is proroguing in December, rather than in late January, suggest this had more to do with shutting down inquiries into the Afghanistan detainee affair than anything else. Is this what we should now expect: governments shutting down Parliament whenever the questioning gets too intense? What will remain of Parliament’s ability, already greatly weakened, to hold governments to account then?

Each time Parliament allows one of these abuses to pass, its power is reduced a little more. Indeed, so diminished has it become that it is hard for some observers to muster much indignation at this latest assault: it’s only Parliament, after all. It’s exactly this sort of whittling away by degrees that has allowed closure, for example, to be invoked more or less routinely to cut of Parliamentary debates, where once it was to be used only in the most extreme circumstances. It was the improper use of closure, recall, that set off the wild, four-week brawl known as the Pipeline Debate. Now, nobody can be bothered.

The time has long since passed for Parliament to take a stand against its own evisceration. The really substantive issue is whether the government will yield to the Commons demand that it produce the Colvin documents, and perhaps that fight can be resumed in March. But proroguing to delay that day of reckoning, possibly in hopes of sneaking through another snap election in the interval, is worthy of some sort of Parliamentary rebuke, which is why the symbolic measure (and it could only be that) of MPs meeting in another place came to mind.

I recognize that Parliament always retains the ultimate sanction of voting no confidence in the government — or at least, on those days that the government will allow it to do so, or deigns to bring forward legislation, or recognizes confidence votes when they occur (see Paul Martin, above). But this is a very blunt instrument. It shouldn’t have to take a vote of non-confidence to get the government to obey basic norms of accountability. I don’t mean only that the government should observe conventions of respect for Parliament, regardless of whether it is conforming to the strict letter of the law. I also mean there should be mechanisms for curbing such abuses, short of dissolving Parliament.

For example, should the power to prorogue rest solely with the Prime Minister (I know, I know: the Governor General, acting on his advice)? Should it not require a vote of Parliament? Might the same rule not also apply to dissolutions?

No Prorogue! - What's this about?

No Prorogue!
(visit the site for more)

What’s this about?

“When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”
Stephen Harper, Canadian Press, April 18, 2005

On December 30th Stephen Harper announced that he will be Proroguing Parliament and suspending democracy until March 3. This is the second time he has done this in under two years.

Proroguing means:

1. All 37 bills being debated in Parliament are thrown in the trash. Discussion on bills starts from scratch in March, wasting months of hard work by all parties. These bills included new crime legislation, limits on credit card insurance rates, etc.
2. Committees investigating accusations of torture of Afghan detainees stop working
3. Discussions and decisions about the pension crisis affecting Canada’s seniors stops
4. Questions about Canada’s inaction at the Copenhagen climate-change summit are silenced. Opportunities to move forward with Canada’s plan for sustainable development are stalled for over a month.
5. Your MPs cannot raise your concerns in Ottawa

NDP stance on the prorogation of parliament issue

Statement by New Democrat Deputy Leader and House Leader Libby Davies | NDP
...

While Stephen Harper is blocking elected Members of Parliament from working in the House of Commons, he is in the process of appointing more and more unelected Senators, something he promised he would never do.

All this to run away from accountability and to further cover up the Afghan detainee torture scandal.

It is unacceptable. New Democrats will continue to work hard, and this is why our MPs will attend, as planned, the NDP Caucus retreat scheduled the week before the return of Parliament in Wakefield, Quebec.

The meeting will go ahead, because, more than ever, New Democrats are committed to keeping the Conservative government accountable. We may need to be creative. But we will be relentless.

A great list of links about the issue at hand - Harper proroguing parliament again

Re Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament - Links

Rick Mercer's response to the latest prorogue of parliament in Canada

RickMercer < read me here.

Plan for the opposition parties when parliament resumes

Opposition Plan "B" < read me in full.

Regarding restructuring the Afghan issue committee so the Conservatives can't stop it from moving forward.

Under normal circumstances, it would be inappropriate for the opposition parties to do this. The House of Commons has always rested on principles of comity and traditions of respect in order to avoid having one political party run roughshod over another. However, I believe that these are exceptional circumstances. At common law, there is a famous maxim which states that "one who seeks equity must do equity." In light of the fact that the Prime Minsiter has suspended our democratically-elected legislature in mid-session two years in a row; in light of the government's outright defiance of a binding order of the House of Commons to release certain documents pertaining to the Afghan detainee torture scandal; in light of the Conservatives' boycott of a Parliamentary committee; and in light of Mr. Harper's contempt for the House of Commons and, by extension, the Canadian citizens it represents; in light of all of this, Mr. Harper and his government deserve no respect from the opposition and are certainly disentitled to benefits of Parliamentary comity.

...

Obama administration pushing Afghan war into Pakistan

Another Point of View: On The Expansion Of Afghanistan War Into Pakistan
US considering drone attacks on Pakistani city of 850,000: report

Senior US officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in the city of Quetta -- a city with some 850,000 people, according to a report Monday.

The Obama Administration is eyeing Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta in an effort to decapitate the Taliban, according to the LA Times. But the prospect of launching a major attack in a highly populous city has struck some officials as unwise, officials who apparently leaked news of the program to a major US newspaper.

Pakistani officials have also warned that the fallout would be severe.

"We are not a banana republic," the Times quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying. If the United States follows through, the official said, "this might be the end of the road."

Read the top link for more on this story.

Man Love Thursday in Afghanistan - What the rest of the world may not know, including Canada

Adam M On The Front Page: Maybe They'll Send A Strongly Worded Letter

Harper admits we wasted lives and money in Afghanistan

Another Point of View: Harper: War-Cheerleading Rhetoric Being Thrown Back In His Face <read full post

In the final analysis, it has been clearly and definitely established that Harper and his Harpies are nothing but the very chickenhawk poseurs I previously called them out to be.

And in their wake, we have lives of our soldiers, and those of their families, utterly wasted - not counting Afghan lives and the billions spent - for nothing more than an empty political excercize aimed at stirring patriotic frenzy and dishing out fearmongering in order to have the power of elected offices.